


A Perfectly Good Heart

by Ever-so-reylo (Ever_So_Reylo)



Series: YPLHverse [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Ben's POV, Doctors & Physicians, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Knotting, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:13:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22059880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ever_So_Reylo/pseuds/Ever-so-reylo
Summary: It’s physically painful, to be near her. And not to be, too.Modern day AU in which Ben is an Alpha, Rey is an Omega, and they are way better at having sex than at communicating with each other. (Your Pretty Little Heartin Ben's POV)
Relationships: Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Original Female Character(s), Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: YPLHverse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1286903
Comments: 390
Kudos: 2461





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi 😊This is Ben's POV for YPLH for anyone who still wants to read it (what, it's only been 84 years?! 😎)  
>   
> A few notes:  
>   
> \- If you have not read [Your Pretty Little Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14388135/chapters/33224439), you are probably not going to get much out of this fic. You don't have to know the plot by heart or anything like that, but I'm also not really explaining events in detail and mostly just focusing on Ben's reaction to them! It's a bit stream of consciousness honestly, and very sparse. If you want to read the original fic in Rey's POV, you can find it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14388135/chapters/33224439). You do not need to read part 2 and 3 of the series, just part 1!
> 
> \- The fic spans the events of YPLH and then goes a little further in time, after Rey and Ben's mating. The Minor Character Death tag is for Luke (who does not really appear in the fic, but Ben is informed of his relatively unexpected death). It's not a huge plot point, but it's going to happen in chapter 3, in case you want to skip it.
> 
> \- The Ben/Original Female Character tag refers to something that happens in chapter one, after Ben meets Rey but before anything happens between him and Rey. If you hate this sort of things but still want to read, my advice is to skip the paragraph that starts from "There is an Omega who goes to his gym..." to "...his life now." (SPOILERS: Ben tries to fool around with another omega to forget Rey, and he hates it, this is all you need to know.)
> 
> \- Chapter 1 and 2 are a bit angsty (before they get together) but chapter 3 should be mostly fluff and porn 💕
> 
> \- I hope someone is still interested in reading this, and to everyone who is: thank you so much for being so patient in the last, um, 1.5 years? 😭
> 
> \- THANK YOU SO MUCH TO [JEN](https://twitter.com/ancientcityjenn) FOR THE BETA AND THE [MOODBOARD](https://twitter.com/EverSoAli/status/1212468073212661760)😭❤️

He is not even sure how she found out that it’s his birthday. 

Ben certainly never told her. Maybe she sneaked a peek at his ID, or hacked his computer, or Luke (damn him to hell) told her. In the end, whatever her methods are, they don’t matter. Because now she _knows,_ and she is smiling in his kitchen, her eyes a limpid brown as she hands him a cup of coffee and tilts her head to look up at him. Her hair brushes against one of the glands on her neck, and Ben tries not to notice.

“Can we go out? To celebrate?”

He shrugs. 

It’s not that he doesn’t want to go out with her. Or stay inside with her. Or sit down and watch paint dry with her. It’s just that he can’t recall the last time someone remembered his birthday. His mother stopped well before his teens, and his father… his father probably never even knew the date.

“There’s no need to—”

“Yes, right.” She has this way of cutting him off, of making him feel like she already knows what he's about to say and letting him know that there is no need for that kind of bullshit between them. It should feel rude, or impatient, but it’s anything but. “So, can we? Go out?”

He exhales slowly. He’s not good at telling her no. 

Not that he ever tries.

“Sure.”

“Awesome.” Her smile turns up about ninety percent, and Rey pushes on the tip of her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “I’ll come up with something super fun. Come on, Ben, don’t make that face.” She inches down and bites his neck gland; a playful nip that sends a frisson of electricity down to his fingertips. “I’m gonna rock your world, I promise,” she whispers with a laugh. 

She’s already out of the room, when he thinks of saying:  _You_ are _my world._

…

There is this buzzing sound inside his head. 

It’s just there, humming in the background while he’s doing surgery, during needlessly long meetings with idiots who shouldn’t be allowed to practice medicine, when he shocks a seventeen-year-old Starbucks barista with neon-green hair by ordering six shots of espresso—“Yes, in a single cup. No cream, no sugar.”

Sometimes it gets too loud, infuriating; mostly if he’s exhausted after weeks of night shifts, or when he’s off work for too long and has too much time to think on his hands. But Ben has learned a few tricks, some useful things that make the buzz recede. Running, or any other type of physically demanding activity. Hiking is good, because nature helps. Some books, though not the boring stuff. High fantasy. Sci-fi shows.

Still. 

Even after all that crap, there is _always_ a low-level buzz in the back of his head, one that Ben has been living with since—fuck, since college, or high school, since even before he presented—and it’s persistent, it’s deafening, it’s _incessant_ , but it’s also oddly reassuring. Managing the buzz, that’s what grounds him. It’s like nursing his bad moods. Indulging his anger. Despising himself. Something safe and familiar to hold on to.

So, there is a buzzing sound inside his head. Always. Forever. 

And then he sees _her_ for the first time, and it just fades away.

…

He had heard of a bunch of new hires, and thought he’d already met all of them within the first six hours or so of his shift. Mostly internal medicine; only one surgical, a guy whose name Ben’s already forgotten (Chase, maybe?) who looks like someone who spray-tans weekly and spends too much time at the gym. 

Then again, so does Ben—the gym, not the damn spray-tan—so, yeah. Chase will probably fit right into the unit.

He sure hadn’t seen the girl around. At least not before that idiot, Dameron, decided that introducing Ben to someone by highlighting the fact that until the previous week she used to be his estranged uncle’s resident might be a brilliant idea. 

Ben—he doesn’t hate other Alphas on principle. He’s not one of those Alphas who feel the need to compete with others on an hourly basis to affirm that his knot is bigger, he really isn’t, but he just cannot stand Dameron and that smug, punchable face of his. 

The girl, though. Ben is pretty sure he hasn’t seen her around. Positive, actually. If he had, he’d certainly remember, because—look at her.

Fucking _look_ at her.

He’s busy doing… work, or something else that he can’t even recall. He is just living his damn life, thinking it’s just a regular day, and then Dameron appears with his smarmy grin and asks, “Have you met Rey Johnson?”

From the name, Ben actually expects a man. But then he lifts his eyes from the patient chart, and of course it’s not a man—it’s _her_ , looking… looking the way she does, and Ben’s brain stutters, trips, and then just stops and goes, “Oh. _”_

_Oh_.

Apparently Ben has a type, and isn’t that a nice tidbit of information to find out about himself in his thirties. Apparently, he likes brunettes with big smiles who are half his size and yet look like they could beat him in any and all legs of a triathlon race. Apparently, he does notice women for the way they look—or at all. Apparently, he can be _interested._

How fascinating.

He is standing there, busy being fascinated, and then he… then he smells her.

There are—well, there _are_ Omega doctors, obviously. Though not very many. And even fewer Omega women doctors. Ben has met maybe ten in the past fifteen years, and eighty percent seem to be in OB/GYN—because for some reason that’s where most of them usually tend to gravitate, just like Alphas clutter all other specialties. Ben doesn’t consider himself a particularly socially aware guy, but he can imagine that if he were an Omega he wouldn’t want to be stuck working in one of the most Alpha-dominated professions, either, because Alphas are… yeah.

And yet. This, this… this _Omega_ is standing in front of him, and he’s currently being informed that she’ll be working in the transplant unit, and that she used to be Luke’s protege or some similar shit, and—

_Oh._

_Oh_ , Again. 

She has freckles. On the bridge of her nose. And her forehead.

She has freckles and Ben is trying to count them but also—now they are talking. To each other. They are having a conversation about all of this, and Ben is just—

Fuck. 

He is going on autopilot and being borderline insulting to her because he has no idea what else he could do or say while her scent slowly works its way inside his lungs and _wrecks_ him like that. Shreds him into tiny pieces to put him back together as her slave, her abject servant. And Rey Johnson is standing up to him saying things about Luke— _fucking Luke_ —and looking like she’d like to murder Ben on the spot, and—

It doesn’t even matter. _Nothing_ matters, nothing at all. Because she smells like something he would give every last thing he owns to fuck. 

Even just once. 

The background noise inside his head has gone silent, and whatever scraps of peace of mind he’s managed to hold on to in the past few decades are being destroyed by this girl and her life-altering, mind-bending smell, and—

_Look at her._

_Smell her._

_She is perfect. She would make an outstanding mate. She is made to take your knot. Kill the other Alpha and everyone else who stands between the two of you, bend her over the nearest surface, scent her, and then bite her until she—_

He has never been more relieved to hear his pager beep.

…

The thing is—she smells _phenomenal_. 

Catastrophically good. 

Ben ups his blockers as much as his doctor will prescribe; then he simply starts taking twice the daily dose, to the point that his head feels perennially stuffed with cotton and he can barely distinguish the designation of people he’s meeting for the first time. Which is really fucking weird and even a bit inconvenient (is this what being a Beta is like? Because maybe his lifelong envy was misplaced) but he would gladly put up with it if it weren’t completely _useless_. 

Her scent breaks through all the same, with an intensity that seems to punch him in the throat in the worst possible moments and places. He doesn’t need to be reminded of her existence when he’s disinfecting and scrubbing up pre-surgery, nor while he’s trying to teach the latest batch of moronic residents about trauma-induced coagulopathy, and he _really_ could do without an erection in the elevator because she was in there maybe fifteen seconds a couple of hours earlier. 

And then, then he finds out about the rest.

…

He walks in on her dropping her stethoscope one morning, and overhears a muttered “frak.”

Two days later, she shows up for a seminar with a Deep Space Nine t-shirt and a Silmarillion pin on her backpack.

The following week he steps into the nurses station as she’s telling Dameron, “I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer.” (Dameron, ignorant idiot that he is, doesn’t get the reference and just stares at her with a confused expression). 

Ben immediately storms out.

…

Her smile should be illegal.

Her ass, too.  Ben has never been one to think particularly highly of himself, but at the very least he would have hoped not to be the type of person who notices a colleague’s ass. 

He can’t help holding it against her.

…

He just… likes her. 

No, not the right word. Liking people is not something Ben does. 

It must be something else.

…

She is… not bad at her job. 

Not at all.

There’s something of his uncle in her. A familiar turn of phrase here, an unnecessary over-prescription of certain lab exams that could be skipped there. But really, those are the least obnoxious parts of Luke. It’s obvious that she knows what she’s doing, and Ben really, _really_ doesn’t want to, he _really_ shouldn’t, but she rapidly becomes his first choice when he has to consult with someone in medicine. 

It’s physically painful, to be near her. And not to be, too.

…

She is a thief.

She _robs_ him of what little control he has fought for over three decades to obtain, of the static noise through which he navigates his life, and leaves a silent emptiness in his head that simply cannot be borne.

It’s unacceptable. He finds himself overcompensating. Forbidding himself to be near her any more that is absolutely necessary.

It’s too much. It’s not enough. 

…

It’s—almost as if his body has finally remembered that sex is this thing. That exists. That can be done. That is supposed to feel good. 

Ben had given it a try in college and maybe med school, and decided that it wasn’t worth the social interaction that inevitably has to come before. Or after. Or during. After that, he’d truly just stopped thinking about it, deciding to instead pour his time and energy into being the best of Snoke’s stable of surgeons, going to the gym, keeping up with the literature on clinical trials.

All of it was, of course, _before_.

_Now_ , he has to change his sheets every couple of days. _Now_ , a box of tissues has taken residence on his nightstand, and he actually ordered lube online, lube that he doesn’t even _need_ , because he’s so primed all the time anyway. It’s not pleasant, when he realizes that he’s gotten himself off maybe ten times in less than a week to mental images that didn’t include anything remotely explicit. It’s just—

She has dimples, when she smiles.

A lilac bra strap peaks out of her neckline as she’s leaving her shift.

There are Star Trek stickers on her laptop.

She eats grapes during Grand Rounds one day, sinking her perfect teeth into each one. 

(Twenty-three grapes. Twenty-three white grapes.)

Ben’s on blockers so heavy, he shouldn’t even be able to get it up. And yet, fucking her is all he thinks about.

It really can’t get any worse.

…

Until they are less than three inches apart for ten minutes or so, and she gives him eight stitches.

Then it gets downright unbearable.

…

There is an Omega who goes to his gym, who is—not Rey, but pretty and friendly and nice-smelling and… sweet, Ben supposes people would say. 

He wouldn’t know, or care. 

She’s been—Ben is bad, _very_ bad at picking out and making sense of social cues that are not ceremoniously offered to him on a silver platter, but this girl has been persistent enough for him to know that she wants something, and that this something would be purely sexual in nature and come with no strings attached, and normally… 

Normally Ben couldn’t be any less interested, but this is not _normal_ anymore, and that has to be taken into consideration.

The truth is… even more miserable than that. 

This girl—her hair, it’s the same color as Rey’s. There, that’s it. That’s the bulk of the reason _why_. So when she steps closer, when she tells him in a breathy tone that Ben would probably find sexy if he were in any way _normal_ , “I like your scent, Alpha,” he doesn’t say anything. He just—he lets her. Ben closes his eyes, and he lets her put her hands on him and stroke him to the most lackluster of orgasms. His knot doesn’t even swell, and—yeah, that’s not surprising. Ben calls up dusty college memories and hastily reciprocates with his own fingers, and then—

Then he goes home. He showers the cloying scent of Omega away, and he fucking does it _right_. Takes himself in hand lets himself think about Rey’s voice, about the way her hair smelled this morning as she showed him a hamartoma on a CT scan, and it takes—

So. Very. Little. 

He makes a mess of his fist, of his bathroom sink; of half of his bed, too.

And then he washes up, releases a slow, ragged breath, and begins to accept that this is his life now.

…

There is, without exaggeration, nothing but mating gland porn on the internet. 

It’s the great big kink—the stuff newly-presented Alphas whisper about in high school, making up a good third of all locker room talk. Ben had never opposed the idea on principle, but he’d also never quite understood what the fuss was about. 

It’s skin. Skin that might smell good—sometimes, because really, in Ben’s experience the pull of Omegas’ smell tends to be vastly overblown—but really, it’s just skin. It’s also skin that comes with consequences, too: unwanted consequences, since mating an Omega is up there with dental reconstruction or playing a tennis double with Hux in the list of things Ben would like to experience. 

He genuinely, _truly_ does not care.

And then—Rey.

Just, _Rey_.

Rey exists. And—Ben finds himself jacking off to weird fantasies of—just licking her _there_. Touching her. Shit—just _looking_ at her, really. The mildest, most PG-rated images that barely qualify as sexual take up living in his head, and—the things they make him do.

Every. Single. Time. 

He acts like he never has, not even when he was fifteen and had just presented, and his bloodstream was little more than raging hormones.

In his favorite, which he thinks about an unacceptable amount of time, Rey’s hair is loose down her shoulders. It’s ridiculous, because she never keeps it down, but it’s only one of a long stream of unrealistic details about the whole thing. Like the fact that she smiles up at him, trusting and welcoming, before turning to give him her back. Or that she reaches back and moves her long, shiny hair until her nape is bare; and then, the flesh of her gland is there. Available to Ben, for him to do whatever he wants with. Which is…

A lot. 

Paradoxical, that he can think of so many things he could do with something so small. Things that range from sweetly innocent to erotic to downright filthy. 

The truth is that Ben has lived like a Beta for years. Rey forces him to acknowledge that he is not one, and he really, _really_ wishes that he could hate her for it. 

…

“Diversity hire.” There is a sneer in Hux’s voice. “I mean. An Omega. A _female_ Omega.”

“I think she was some kind of… I don’t know. She went to med school on some kind of low SES scholarship, I heard.” Phasma sounds mostly uninterested, like she is just making conversation. She waves distractedly at Ben as he enters the locker room, and then continues sorting her scrubs into different piles.

“She does have that vibe.” Hux is still sneering. As per usual. 

“What vibe?”

“You know. Trashy.”

“Really?” Phasma shrugs. “Doesn’t seem that trashy to me.”

“Oh, come on. She is appalling. This is one of the best hospitals in the country, and Rey Johnson comes to work wearing knee socks and putting her hair in three ridiculous buns—”

Ben doesn’t even remember charging at Hux. Or squeezing his neck between the hard metal of the locker and his forearm. Or pushing into him until he can feel his windpipe nearly bend under his grip. His last recollection is vague, a hazy moment of realization that the horrible things Hux is saying are about his mate, _about his fucking mate_ and then—

“What did you just say?” He hisses at Hux.

“I—”

“What _the fuck_ did you just say about her?”

He can see Phasma from the corner of his eye, staring at them bemused. Wisely not intervening.

“Nothing,” Hux chokes out. “Nothing, I—”

Ben growls. “If I hear you say one more word about her, you are _dead_.”

Hux somehow manages a choppy nod; Ben lets go of him, and watches him crumble to the floor. Then he storms out of the locker room, trying to ignore the itch in his hands, the one that insists that Hux needs to be killed.

…

He could quit, he supposes. Easily find another job, relocate, put some distance between himself and her. He doubts anyone will ever smell half as good to him, anyway. Getting away from Rey would be a permanent solution to this problem of his.

_Or_. 

Or, he could _make_ her. It would be so easy. To lean into his nature, into _hers_. She’s an Omega, and he’s an Alpha, which means that he could command her. He could make her want it, and even make her like it if he—

_Fuck._

Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

Ben runs thirteen miles that day. When he gets home he takes a cold shower, and then he makes a few strategic phone calls, letting it be known that he might be in the market for a new position. 

…

Then, one day—she comes to his office.

_Fuck_ , he thinks. _Fuck_. He tries to look anywhere but at her. To keep busy. To ground himself. To not breathe.

_Fuck_.

“Can I come in?”

_No. No, you can’t. Because if you do I might—_

But he nods, because he’s an idiot, and—

It’s like all those elevator rides, and the staff meetings in packed conference rooms, and that time she was giving him sutures and she smelled like the sex Ben doesn’t even want to have. It’s like all of those moments, but a million times worse. More than that. And he’s not being, as Luke would have said when they still talked to each other (now, _that_ was a mistake)—Ben’s not being “his dramatic self.” 

This is just terrifying. And _delicious_.

And then she says something about sex, and his mind explodes. He’s been hard since she came in—no, he’s been hard since she started working in this hospital, since she moved to this fucking city—but now he feels close to doing something truly appalling, and—

She needs to get the fuck out of his space. Before they both regret it.

“If you’re interested. With me, I mean. Not like… not dating or anything. But we could…” 

Ben can feel his brain melt and drip out of his skull. 

This is—catastrophic. It’s all he’s ever wanted.

That is to say: in the past, he _thought_ he wanted a lot of things. His parents’ acceptance, being a half-decent doctor, Snoke’s approval; for people to stop annoying him and leave him the fuck alone. But he can see now that he _thought_ he wanted those things, while in truth he just had mild preferences about the direction in which he wanted his life to go.

This, her, Rey—she is _necessary_.

And unwise.

Then again, Ben has never been particularly smart. 

“I am. Interested.”

He—basically assaults her, really, but she feels _incredible_ , and she smells even better, and there are so many horrible things he is going to do to her. He kisses her and licks her and sucks on her skin and—he is going to _defile_ her. He is going to ruin her like she ruined him, use her in ways that have no name in the English language, that have not been invented yet, and—

If she asked him to stop now, Ben is not sure that he could, and this, _this_ is exactly how he thought it would be, being an Alpha. This uncontrollable rush in his blood, his vision narrowing to her and only her, the urge to take, to win, to _have_ , to mate his Omega pounding in his ears, and—

“We can’t do it here,” she tells him. Sweetly, like the good little Omega she is. His perfect girl, who holds him in the palm of her small hand. “Not here, Alpha.” 

It’s not easy, stepping away from her, but he doesn’t hesitate; he will do what she wills. She owns him, after all.

Ben begins to realize that perhaps, perhaps being an Alpha doesn’t mean what he always thought. 

…

It’s entirely possible that it’s been too long to remember correctly; that time and lack of interest have dulled his memories. But: Ben has never fucked like this before. 

He has always tried—and managed quite easily—to remain enough in control to give his partners a way to lead. To object. A way out. The Alphas had demanded it, and the Betas and the Omegas—well, Alpha or not, he wasn’t about to use his hormones to manipulate anyone. Didn’t care enough to, honestly. 

The Omegas he’s been with—one, two? Maybe even three—were probably some fifteen years ago, and they’d smelled nicer than the Betas and the Alphas, but the encounters had ultimately been…. Okay. Fine, really.

Forgettable.

He feels the first twinge of concern the moment he hears her pull into his driveway: he’s probably not going to be any good at this. He should have practiced. Should have had more—some?—sex in the past decade, in preparation for Rey. At the very least, he should have combed Reddit for easy tips on how to make Omegas come. Instead all he did was masturbate in the shower before she came over, ostensibly so he wouldn’t blow his load as soon as she allowed him to touch her, but really because just the thought of her stepping into his house—of his sheets smelling like her, even for just a few precious minutes—is enough to make him a little stupid.

 _This_ is stupid. The things he has been picturing doing to her—they are ridiculous.

She will not let him knot her. And she might even change her mind halfway through, because of course she could. Consent, and shit like that. It’s tricky stuff, between Alphas and Omegas. The inherently coercive power he holds over her, just by virtue of their compatible hormones, is frankly horrible, disgusting, and…

Heady.

He has thought many times about the things he could make her do, just with his voice. The things he could make her _want_ to do. He is a fucking animal, and that’s all there is to it. He should not be allowed around her.

What happens, though, is that he sees her and his heartbeat starts thundering in his ears, and the next thing he knows is that his face is inside her beautiful little cunt. Her soft body beneath him is inviting and welcoming, and as he slides inside and out he feels grounded like he never has before.

He does _almost_ knot her, that first time. He almost knots her every single time they fuck, if that’s even the right word for this otherworldly thing that they’re doing. But that first time, when she feels like nothing else and babbles underneath him and begs him for more and more and more, that first time, how he manages not to get lost in the avalanche of his orgasm and to pull out is unclear to him. Of all of his accomplishments, this is by far the one he’s proudest of.

“You okay?” She asks after everything, and her voice, sweet and concerned and so, _so_ lost—it makes his cock twitch and come a little bit more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys thank you so much for the comments and the support, you are the best I do not deserve you ❤️😭❤️

He tries to ask her out. Twice.

It’s slightly dumbfounding. He has never wanted to take anyone out on a date, never been interested in it, but he finds himself wondering. Wanting to convince her to give him a try. She will never like him as much as he likes her, because Rey is Rey, and Ben is… himself, but it wouldn’t even matter. He’d still like to do it. To hear her answer his questions, talk to him. Know the inside of her head a little bit.

So he tries to ask her out. Twice.

Both times—he already knows that it’s not a good idea. She’s been honest from the very start about what this should be, and as much as Ben is completely, utterly disgusting at respecting her boundaries, he really doesn’t want to be _that_ Alpha; especially not with an Omega who, he is starting to suspect, is more skittish than most, and for seemingly good reasons. 

He tries after the first night, a simple request for breakfast together through a hastily scribbled note, but she disappears from his house while he’s doing an emergency lung transplant, and Ben tells himself that he has no grounds for resentment. She was very clear about what she wanted. Crystal clear. 

Just fucking. No dating. 

He supposes his pride should be hurting, but his heart hurts more. He spends a few days wondering if the sex was bad—maybe he fucked her too hard, maybe five times was too many, maybe he should have left her mating gland alone but how could he have, really? After a while, though, she asks him to fuck her again, and he figures it must have been at least tolerable. 

The second time he asks her out is a little clumsier. He brings up a movie they might both like, trying to sound as casual as possible. She immediately shuts him down, and even mentions another man, which—fair. Absolutely fair.

And yet, Ben spends the following weeks dreading the moment he will smell it on her, that she has finally started fucking someone else. 

…

She gives Grand Rounds at 7 AM on a rainy Tuesday, and Ben can’t stop marveling: at her confidence, at the clear way in which she speaks of complicated concepts, at her beauty.

”Any questions?” she asks in the end with a smile.

So many.

_Have you always been this lonely?_

_Why exactly do you let me fuck you? You must know how much better than me you are._

_Will I ever get to knot you?_

Ben raises his hand, and she nods in his direction.

“What about the role of the alveolar mucosa?”

…

She has a tiny mole on her left hip.

He notices the second time they fuck (the first is just a blur of hazel eyes and the mouthwatering taste of her slick; Ben can barely breathe) and looks for it every single time afterwards. A Northern star, perhaps. A small compulsion. 

_It’s still here. I’m touching it. Because she’s allowing me, here, with her. Again._

It becomes a ritual or sorts, a way to track time and his continued existence. Before Rey, his days were work, and sleep, and punishing his body with exercise, and more work. Now it's his encounters with her, that beat the time of his existence.

He licks that tiny mole on his way to her cunt. Breathes against it as one of his fingers dips into her ass, trying not to come before he’s even made it inside her. Once or twice his eyes catch on it while she gets dressed hastily, eager as ever to get out of his presence; Ben tries, but fails to pretend to be engrossed in his phone’s email app. 

After she leaves, he presses his face in the sheets, and summons the images of her body as if they were postcards of landscapes collected on one of his hiking trips. Her hips are the Rocky Mountains, and her breasts the Appalachian: smooth, rolling expanses, full of the maddening scent of her. The space between her thighs, where he buries his head and spends so much of their time together, is more lush than the Kenai. The hollow of her throat tastes like salt and sun-baked seashells, a shaggy coastline on the Pacific.

She is, Ben often thinks, like a journey. The cruelest and loveliest of journeys. 

…

She calls him Alpha.

Voice husky and eyes calm, she calls him Alpha _—Alpha. Yes, Alpha. Please_ , _Alpha_ —and for the first time in… forever, really, Ben doesn’t quite hate it. All of this this. This fucking curse of his, this biological prison that has dictated his life ever since he presented, constantly telling both him and others _what, why, how_ Ben Solo should be. 

Ben doesn’t hate it, because when she calls him Alpha it’s obvious, as clear as the cleanest of waters, that he was made for her, for her and no other. And that she was meant for him. 

And similar nonsense. 

Rationally, he _knows_ it’s all bullshit. Nevertheless, he is ready to tear out the throat of anyone who’ll try to deny it. 

This girl isn’t going to let him buy her coffee, let alone mate her; and yet, there isn’t going to be anyone else for him, ever again. 

_…_

For a few months, Rey is _mostly_ his. 

Lots of fucking her. Lots. Very little interaction otherwise, but she always smells like him, and she lets him do the filthiest things to her—things that are usually reserved for mates, though whether Rey is aware of it, Ben’s not quite sure—so the Alpha part in him doesn’t even care. 

The almost-sane human adult that Ben pretends to be in his daily life—well, _he_ cares. And maybe, sometimes, he checks her shift schedule to know what she is up to. Maybe he keeps tabs on her to make sure that she is fine and resting adequately even during those long, horrible stretches of days when for one reason or another they can’t meet. And maybe—maybe this is completely unacceptable, borderline stalking behavior, but it doesn’t even matter, because Ben can’t hate himself any more than he already does, can he?

If he can’t have her, all he wants is to make sure that she is safe and happy. He sees her talk and laugh and joke with other men, sometimes—mostly Betas and Dameron, every once in a while another Alpha who’s not worthy of polishing her shoes—and each time he thinks he’s going to flip and murder them and fuck Rey right in front of their dead bodies. And then he sees her smile, and something holds him back, centers him, brings him back to sanity. 

_You have one job, Solo. Protect her and make sure she’s happy. And be thankful that she lets you fuck her every once in a while._

Look at him: Ben Solo, exhibiting patience, restraint, and self-control; he must be growing as a person. 

The power of love, or some bullshit like that. 

…

Snoke takes him aside one day, and that’s _never_ a good sign. This time is worse than usual though, because Ben knows that he hasn’t fucked up in a long time, which means that it has to be about…

He has no idea what it could be about.

“Is there something I should know?” Snoke asks, voice cold and deceptively calm. 

Ben racks his brain.

Is there? It’s been over a decade, and since his falling out with Luke, Snoke has been the closest thing to family for Ben. He might not exactly be the nurturing type, but he is the one person who knows about Ben’s past. About Ben’s head. He knows what’s best for Ben, and he’s always made sure that he had access to the most prestigious internships and fellowships. He’s the one who pushed Ben to become the surgeon he is, and the one who talked Ben out of quitting when he considered moving back home to make a last-ditch attempt at reconciliation with Han before he died. Snoke always looks out for Ben, in his own away. 

“I don’t think so, no.”

Snoke’s lips thin. “Are you in a relationship?”

“I am not.”

“Really?”

Ben frowns. “Yes, really.”

“Your smell.”

For a moment Ben doesn’t understand what Snoke is referring to, and then—then he is taken aback. Because of course Snoke must mean that—

But Ben didn’t know. 

It makes sense. It absolutely makes sense that he’d smell like the Omega he’s been… for lack of a better word, _fucking_ for the past few months. Especially because Rey has been smelling like him for weeks, now. But it’s not as if there is anyone in Ben’s life with the balls to let him know, and an Omega’s scent is usually much more subtle than an Alpha’s, and—

He really wasn’t aware. 

And now he is, and a sense of deep satisfaction settles inside of him, a warm, heavy pleasure that has no reason to be but envelops that stupid, primal, beastly part of his brain that seems to be convinced that Rey is his one true mate.

She has marked him. He is worthy.

Snoke is still staring at him with narrowed eyes, waiting for an answer.

“Whose smell is it?”

He freezes.

Ben never, ever openly tells lies. _Never_. Not because he’s morally above it or anything as precious as that, but because lying, manipulating… they require a great deal of effort and upkeep, and ultimately yield the same exact result as yelling or scaring people shitless—which happens to suit Ben’s natural disposition much better. 

Ben never lies. And yet.

“It’s no one’s,” Ben lies.

_It’s not even a lie_ , a self-loathing voice inside him suggests. _You really are nothing to her._

Snoke nods, and for some reason it doesn’t sit right with Ben.

...

(He does a couple of things he truly despises himself for. 

Stealing a thong she forgot at his place to masturbate into— _God_ , he’s fourteen; snapping a picture of her with his phone, ostensibly because she is standing in front of a very good diagram of pulmonary circulation, but really just because she is smiling so brightly that day. The picture, he doesn’t even get off to: he just stares at it for a creepily long time, and that is somehow even more disturbing.

Nah, who is he kidding: the thong is definitely worse.)

…

She calls him out of the blue, after weeks of nothing.

They are not nice weeks. They are, in fact, pure hell. 

After the first rejection, he gives himself three texts: three texts to get her to meet with him again.

Three still feels a lot like he is pestering her. Two or one would be ideal, and none would be perfect, but Ben has never been an outstanding guy. The very opposite, in fact: he’s an Alpha and she’s his Omega, and there all these voices swirling in his head, repeating ridiculous things like “ _she’s yours_ ” and “ _just make her_ ” and ” _you need her_ ” and “ _mate her, mate her, mate her_.” 

So he does the best he can, and he gives himself one simple rule: three texts to convince her to continue this thing between them. She politely declines for three times, and Ben tells himself that she has moved on, and that he has to get over it. Get over _her_. 

That these are the rules.

He _shatters_ the rules when she doesn’t show up for a team meeting and someone mentions off-handedly that she’s home with the flu. That night he shows up to her place with her weight in drugs and soup, and that’s creepy as fuck and probably even downright scary for an indisposed Omega, but come on, his mate—fine, fine, she is technically not, but just... let him have this, at least when she’s sick, or he’ll go fucking crazy—his mate is ill and alone, and he needs to take care of her.

So, three texts; and thirty minutes spent staring at her to make sure she’s having every last drop of her chicken soup; and then nothing.

It’s fine. Ben tells himself that it’s okay—it’s her choice. He can weather this. 

He runs, more than usual. Once or twice he gets completely wasted. He doesn’t sleep, but that’s okay. Sometimes he forgets to eat, which is common enough for him, though never quite for such long stretches of time. He takes over a project he doesn’t have the time for, and submits one systematic review and one meta-analysis. He tries to keep busy and not think about it. Not think about _her_.

Then the phone call comes.

…

She is not very direct about it, which is somewhat surprising and also not; she has always been a weird mix of honesty and shyness around him. 

The way she starts the conversation, he thinks that she is sick. Really sick. It’s just a few minutes, but for a moment, a horrifically stretched moment, Ben contemplates a world in which Rey Johnson simply doesn’t exist, and it’s more painful than anything he could ever imagine.

_I can fix it,_ he thinks. _I must be a fucking doctor for something—I’ll learn how to fix it. I’ll learn how to fix you. And then you’ll be free to—_

“I think I’m about to go into heat,” she says. A pause, in which Ben’s pulse thuds once, and then immediately slows to a crawl. “Would you like to help me out?”

The rest of the world recedes.

…

He asks Chase F. to feed Rian for three days— _Sure thing. Didn’t know you have a cat?_ —and then he drives over to Rey’s place, stopping at a grocery store to pick up some food. Fruit, something instinctual tells him that she’ll want fruit and juices, and Ben just trusts it. It occurs to him, vaguely, like an afterthought, that he has no idea what to do. He has never had the faintest interest in researching Omegas’ heats before Rey, and after Rey… 

After Rey he’d been _too_ interested to allow himself. 

He walks in her apartment, smells her, and immediately feels a sense of peace. Immediately he _knows_.

She will need to be fucked. 

By him. 

Over and over. 

Fucked and held and knotted— _shit, finally_ —and taken care of and fed and kept happy. 

She will _need_ , and he will _provide_. Oh, the simple, mathematical, biological beauty of it. 

Ben has no delusions about his skills in bed—he’s a surgeon, aware that everything in life is practice and that this is not an area he’s applied himself to—but he knows that he will be able to do this. He’s trying to sort through the images in his head, images about what he’ll do to her, _for_ her, when Rey begins to tell him how much she hates _this_ , how much she hates having _him_ around, and…

It slices deep, but somehow it’s not even a problem. Because this is not about him. This is about her— _everything is about her_ —and he’ll see her through this heat; this is how he’ll spend his life, making sure that she has what she needs to be happy, because this is his purpose, this is why he is on this Earth, and if for Rey to be happy he has to ensure that she has a knot stuffed inside her for three days and then get out of her apartment as soon as her heat over, because she doesn’t much care for the person the knot is attached to, then—

“I’m so tired,” she says.

Ben is in his scrubs, sitting stiffly on her lumpy couch. On the TV screen, Picard and Ryker are having a drawn-out argument about non-sentient lifeforms.

He could fuck her _so_ easily, now. It’s been so long, and he wants it so much, his hands are shaking; a faint tremor he thought he had trained out of himself ages ago. 

But he could also easily hold her. Whatever she wants, really.

“Come here.”

She weighs nothing in his lap.

“I’m so tired. I’m sorry,” she repeats, and he thinks: _You have nothing to be sorry about. This is what I_ am _for._

He doesn’t get to say it, because she’s already asleep in his arms. 

…

He’s on blockers so high that it should be biologically impossible, and yet her heat triggers his rut. Ben has next to no memories of what happens in her apartment. He vaguely remembers struggling to keep his hands to himself; telling himself that this is _her_ heat, that this is not about him or his pleasure, that he is only here to be used by her; still, about halfway through something inside him snaps and he turns her over, bends her to her knees, and—he is not sure how he manages not to bite her.

Really, he is not sure.

On the fourth day, he wakes up and her scent is back to normal—if the way she smells to him can ever be called that. But she’s not heated anymore, and Ben stares at her for what feels like seconds but is probably one hour; then he forces himself out of her bedroom, her apartment, her building, her neighborhood, and tells himself that from now on this will have to be close enough.

…

Some Beta nurse from another department comes to get him at the end of a routine surgery, on minute four of Ben scrubbing his hands clean under the cold jet of water. 

“Your mate, Doctor. She had a fainting spell.”

He initially thinks the nurse is talking to someone else. But the only people left in the room are Ben and Hux, and not only Hux is very much not mated, he is also looking at Ben and laughing in his usual obnoxious, asinine way.

“Oh my God,” he snorts. “Did you _mate_ Rey Johnson?”

No. No, he did not mate her, which is the source of all his current misery. But Hux’s words at least have the effect of reminding Ben that he is disgusting: that the second he realized that Rey was even more inexperienced than him, Ben starting doing every single thing he could, short of properly mating her, like marking her with his scent as deep as he could go. That if someone could ever be mistaken for Ben’s mate, it’s Rey.

Which means that Rey must be the one who just had a fainting spell.

“Oh, Ben.” Hux only calls him Ben when he uses this stupid, condescending tone. “Ben, you really mated her?”

Ben doesn’t answer, because he is already running out of the room.

...

He gets recruited by other hospitals once every couple of months or so—even more frequently after he put feelers out a few months ago. All good surgeons do, and Ben is among the best, trained by the best. Probably _the_ best, and he says it without any conceit, because the number of people who die in his OR is still staggeringly high.

When Johns Hopkins calls, he is almost tempted. He doesn’t particularly want to move, but he can’t stop thinking about the last time he was with Rey. 

After she passed out from… exhaustion, or hunger, or something— _way to take care of your mate, Solo_ —and he got to drive her back to her apartment, and…

What a decent, worthy Alpha would have done is make her a sandwich and tuck her into bed, but not Ben. No. Ben had to fuck her, of course. Follow her to her bed, take her offensive clothes off, and fuck her until they couldn’t remember their own names. Bite her, mark her on both her neck glands, leave red welts on her skin only to spend long, glorious minutes trying to lick them better.

Knot her, too, because he’s an asshole like that.

Fill her with his come and then fill her some more, and then a little more because it had been weeks since he’d been allowed to touch her, long weeks since her heat, and these days it’s not as if he thinks about anything but her when he’s awake. 

Or asleep. 

And then he realized that she was crying, probably exhausted, probably wondering why this piece of shit who was supposed to take her home safely was going to be stuck in her bed for the following half an hour, and Ben felt lower than ever before. An animal.

_I’m sorry,_ he thought of saying. _I’m a fucking beast._ In the end he settled for kissing the tears away from her skin, the taste hot and salty and sweet at the same time. Then he got dressed, and it still took him an inordinate amount of time to get out, because she was so soft and sweet and beautiful and...

Though he’d certainly never looked forward to it, as a teenager and then as a young adult, and if he’s honest even a little later than that, Ben had considered the possibility that he might one day fall in love. But he had never, ever imagined that it would eviscerate him to this level.

“Sorry.” He clears his throat, trying to remember what the conversation is about. “The phone cut off. What was your question again?”

“The position at Hopkins, Ben. Would you be interested in applying for it? It would just be a formality, of course.”

He closes his eyes. Thinks of his mate, who doesn’t want him. Thinks that however little she might need from him, it would be his privilege to serve her.

Years ago, when he was right out of med-school, after that huge mess with Luke, and the death of his father; years ago, in their last conversation, when it was obvious that he had no plans to ever reach out to anyone with Skywalker blood ever again, his mother had told him in tears: 

“No matter how you feel about this family, I will always love you for the both of us.”

Ben had just felt hate and spite at the time. 

And yet. Now.

He takes a deep breath. “No, I’m sorry. I cannot move away.”

…

They go for weeks without any contact. None at all. 

Which—fine. Okay. He can do this. He can respect her choices.

One night he gets out of an emergency surgery to find fourteen missed calls from her on his phone, and his heart starts thrashing around in his chest like a lion cub. But before he can call her back Hux tells him that it was for a consult and he has already taken care of it, and Ben drives home clutching the steering wheel until his knuckles are ghost-white.

Still. Fine. Okay.

At least he’s here. He’s around. To take care of her, should she need it. To keep an eye on her and try not to stare too much when he sees her running around the hallways. It’s fine.

It’s fine.

And then she spends her heat with another Alpha.

…

Dameron is pissed at Ben, which is exhausting. 

Or: that Dameron is pissed at him is neither here nor there, but the fact that he came to see Ben in his office to let it be known is potentially problematic, because Ben could really see himself tearing out Dameron’s trachea with his teeth and leaving him in a puddle of blood on the floor before turning back to finish his paperwork.

The struggle is real.

“What happened the other day…” Dameron starts, and Ben shows him his teeth, because…

What happened the other day?

What happened the other day is that Ben walked into a room and smelled residues of sweat and exhaustion and delicious, precious slick on Rey. What happened is that, after a moment of disorientation, it occurred to him that he had smelled that precise combination on her before. What happened is that Ben walked into a room for a fucking consult, and then found out that his mate asked someone else, some nameless Alpha, to see her through her heat. She was in _need_ , and she had _someone else_ take care of her.

Out of all his numerous failures, this is the deepest. There is no coming back from this: from his mate choosing someone else over him.

“Man, you can’t do that shit.” Dameron is scowling at him. “You can’t be like that to her. I understand that you two were fucking and then you got tired of her or something, but she’s been sick and just went through a heat.” 

The second he mentions Rey’s heat, Ben’s vision goes red and white. 

He growls. There is a part of him that is very close to standing up from his chair and just breaking Poe’s neck. Which—it would probably be fine, in the long run. Justified. Dameron’s an Alpha, after all, and currently in Ben’s territory; the law is weird about stuff like that, so Ben wouldn’t even have to do too much time for it. Maybe a couple of years and some anger management classes; then his license would be revoked, so he’d have to move elsewhere and find a new job. Make chairs out of twigs and see them on Etsy, or something. Never smell Rey again. Maybe, with time, the memory of her scent would dull.

Sounds much better than his current life.

“Get the fuck out,” he snarls at Dameron.

It speaks to how pissed Ben must look, that Dameron just lifts his hands defensively and immediately backs out of his office.

Ben sighs. Then buries his face in his palms for a long, long time. Then he sits up, dials his contact at Johns Hopkins on his office phone, and asks if their offer is still on the table.

...

They’re talking about basketball, Ben’s pretty sure.

Every Saturday morning the surgery unit (minus Snoke) plays basketball at one of the courts in the Rec Center by the hospital; except that the Rec Center is closing soon, for renovations or whatnot, and a new gym will need to be found. That’s what the conversation at Ben’s table is currently about, in this idiotic, waste-of-time charity gala (or, as Ben likes to privately call it, mandatory hospital prom); but Ben is not really listening, because whether they choose the closest YMCA or the objectively better but overpriced Planet Fitness, Ben is unlikely to be playing basketball there, since he' s leaving for Baltimore in less than a month.

It’s for the best, really.

He’s halfway through his first glass of champagne when Dameron’s mate (or husband, or boyfriend, or whatever) puts his hand on Ben’s arm, drags him up from his chair, and takes him aside. 

Ben briefly considers punching him in the face. But:

“You need to get her home safely,” Dameron’s mate tells him, and Ben—he just blinks at him.

“What?”

“Rey.” 

Ben stiffens. Whatever it is that this guy wants to tell him, it immediately becomes very interesting.

“What about Rey?”

“Come with me.” He motions with his hand, and—it’s clear that Dameron’s mate is enjoying this just as little as Ben is. “Rey got hammered. Poe needs you to take her home before she does something idiotic.”

Ben purses his lips, but he follows him outside.

The first thing he notices when they step near the bench is her dress. It’s a pretty standard little black dress, not a particularly revealing one—especially considering that Ben has not only _seen_ , but even _licked_ every single inch of Rey’s body. (Yes, every single one.) Still, there is something about seeing his mate dressed up and wearing more makeup than usual, about thinking of her wishing to be beautiful for someone else; something that sends a painful, aroused pang to his stomach.

The second thing he notices is that she is absolutely wasted. She can barely sit upright, even leaning against Doctor Pava and with Dameron holding her shoulders. To be fair, Pava seems to be as bad off as Rey.

The third thing is—her scent.

Her goddamned scent. A jarring mixture of alcohol, the sweetest, most perfect sex in the world, and Alpha reek.

“Why the fuck does she smell like that?” he hisses at Dameron, crouching in front of her. Rey doesn’t seem to recognize Ben, but she inhales deep in his direction and then smiles a happy, blissed out grin.

“I don’t know. Some asshole she was dancing with.” 

Ben is seeing red already, but orders himself to calm down. If someone had asked him three weeks ago, he’d have said that he couldn’t possibly live in a world in which Rey has fucked someone else. During her _heat_. And yet, here he is. More or less alive. 

He can do this. He can take care of her. 

Rey comes first.

“Was he the one she spent her heat with?”

Dameron frowns. “What? No. She didn’t… She met this guy tonight. He noticed that she was drunk as shit and took advantage and scented her.”

“Why did you let her dance in these conditions?”

Ben must be growling or something, because Poe begins to growl back. 

“I don’t know, it didn’t seem like such a big deal.” He is showing some teeth. “Do you think it’s more or less of a dick move than fucking her for months and scenting her as heavily as a mate, and then just dropping out of her life when she’s at her neediest—”

“Ben!” Rey says, as if finally realizing that he’s there. Her voice is slurred and happy, and Poe’s words fade to the background. Everything fades to the background, and Ben smiles back and reaches out for her and picks her up.

And then he remembers.

Things that he hadn’t really forgotten, to be honest: how nice she feels, how beautiful her freckles, how soft her skin. How amazing she is at giving head, how funny her sense of humor, how tender the sounds that come out of her throat just before she falls asleep. 

How much he loves her.

“Listen,” Dameron says, sounding mostly tired. But Ben doesn’t want to listen. Rey is nuzzling his neck with her nose, and he just wants to put her to bed—his bed—and keep her there for the foreseeable future. Not even to fuck her. 

Well—he could fuck her. Easily. But he’d be just as happy to know that she is getting a restful night of sleep, and that there is water and ibuprofen on her nightstand for when she wakes up. 

Dameron is still yapping his mouth at him: “Maybe the two of you should have a conversation. Maybe you’re both making assumptions, here.”

Ben has no idea what he's talking about, and frankly, he could not care less. He has purpose, now: to take his Omega away, and keep her safe until she sobers up enough to remember that she’s not his Omega at all.

(God, he _really_ wants to knot her to himself for the next decade. And the dress sure doesn’t help.)

He turns around and starts carrying Rey to his car, his eyes closing briefly when her warm hand begins to slide inside the collar of his shirt.

“’Night,” Dameron yells after him.

Ben ignores him.

…

He sits on a chair and stares at Rey while she sleeps in his bed, the rhythmic sound of her breath soft and soothing in the otherwise silent room. A little before dawn Rian wanders upstairs, jumps on top of the duvet, and curls at her feet with a yawn. Rey fidgets a little and turns around, blindly reaching for Ben’s pillow. She hugs it to her chest and inhales into it, slowly, deeply, a soft smile curving her lips.

When the sun rises Ben sighs, stands up, and pads down the stairs to make some coffee.

…

A few hours later, with a handful of very simple words (“ _I will miss you, Ben”_ ) the rest of his life begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise fluff and happiness in the next chapter!! ❤️


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not sure what this chapter is but i love you guys ❤️Also remember the minor character death warning re: Luke ❤️❤️❤️

One step into the house, and he immediately trips on a half-rolled up yoga mat.

Ben steadies himself with a hand on the coat rack. Then he frowns. Then finishes rolling up the mat, puts it away, and makes his way to the living room.

There is a half-eaten green Twizzler on the mail table in the hallway, a feathered cat toy he doesn’t recall buying dismembered in the middle of the kitchen, and a baby blue Littman stethoscope draped over one of the stools near the breakfast island. In another room, or possibly in the backyard, someone is singing very loudly about feeling twenty-two; whoever it is who wrote this song, Ben is fervently hoping it’s not the same person whose concert he has promised to accompany Rey to.

(Who is he kidding? It’s the same person. It’s totally same person.)

He sets his gym bag on the floor, takes one more look around the room, and sighs.

He used to be able to walk into his house and know exactly where everything could be found. His life used to be orderly and monotone—never this chaotic, unpredictable, eviscerating mess. He used to have it under control, everything, _all of it_ , and now—

“Hey!” Rey runs into the room with the cat in her arms. She stops, lets her down in front of her bowl, and then tilts her head back to beam up at Ben. “It’s dinner time for Rian.” She is wearing a National Psoriasis Foundation 5K t-shirt, shorts that barely cover her ass, and for some unfathomable reason there is a smudge of blue frosting stuck to her cheek. Ben has never liked sugar, and yet he wants to lick it off. “How are you?”

He takes one last look around the room, and thinks: “ _Never better.”_

…

The first time they make love, it’s…

Frightening, mostly. 

He hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, and he hasn’t slept _well_ in months, but he’s not sure that’s the reason everything feels so much brighter. Her smell is more intense, the taste of her more vibrant, her little wet cunt as she squirms under him more tight. The noises she makes are breathier, and her hand, her small, soft hand as she pushes back his sweaty hair and kisses him on the cheek…

Ben has to close his eyes and hide his face in her neck.

…

He is on call that night, but for once the planets must be aligned just so, and his pager doesn’t beep. Instead he falls asleep with Rey on top of him, after hours spent making out like teenagers, interleaved with hours spent fucking like very wild, besotted animals, and when he wakes up the room is awash in the moonlight.

He blinks his eyes open and finds Rey staring at him, her head on his pillow and a faint smile on her lips. 

For a moment he is not sure whether she is a real thing.  Then she whispers, “I fed the cat. Is that okay?” and it punches him like a wave in a storm, the knowledge that she is here.

Maybe to stay.

…

“I don’t know that I can do this,” he admits hours later, while she is dozing again on top of him. Her eyelashes flutter against his skin, tickling him.

“Why?”

“Because…” _I am afraid. That I am too much. That I am not enough. I have had no guidance; no one in my family has ever been able to maintain a relationship, and I am the worst of the entire lot. I don’t doubt that I can love you, but can I love you the right way? Will I get selfish? Stop putting you first? Will I start taking, like Alphas so often do?_ “I don’t know how.”

“Mmm.” He feels her smile curve against his chest. “Neither do I.”

Rationally, the admission should send him in a panic. It should drive him crazy and make him doubt himself and call this whole thing off, for Rey’s own good. Instead he exhales deeply, and says:

“Well, then.”

She smiles, and laughs a little into him. “We can make a mess of this, together.”

Ben thinks that doesn’t sound so bad.

…

The following day, when they’re about slip out of the door, she stops him with a hand around his wrist.

“Can I ask you something? A favor.”

_Anything_. “Depends.”

“About Hux. Please, don’t do anything stupid.”

Ben’s inhales. He _wants_ to do something stupid. He _wants_ to kill Hux. He _wants_ to make him suffer ten, twenty, one hundred times more brutally than Rey did spending an entire heat by herself. He is so used to being furious and surly and irritated all the time that it’s almost disconcerting to find that he can be even angrier than his baseline.

He has to clench his jaw. “I don’t think that pummeling his face would be stupid in the least.”

Rey sighs; then, while holding his gaze, takes his hand in both of hers, lifts it to her face, and plants a kiss in the middle of his palm. 

Ben feels his fury dissolve, little by little.

“I—Please. Can we just talk to HR or something? I want to see Hux with two black eyes just as much as anyone, but I just don’t want this on me.”

“It wouldn’t be. It would be on me—”

“And I want it on _you_ even less.”

Ben looks at her, knowing that whatever she wants from him, she’ll get. Always. Forever.

He can only hope it’ll take her awhile to realize it.

“I’ll think about it.” 

…

His… control issues around her begin almost immediately. 

Neither of them openly acknowledges it, but Rey practically moves in the day after the fundraiser, and it’s a lot, going from just thinking about her 24/7 to having her scent and her smile and her voice and just _her_ around all the time. Maybe, if only the first few months hadn’t been so rocky, he wouldn’t have this constant feeling that she’s about to leave. But things are what they are, and Ben simply cannot stop thinking that if he mated her he wouldn’t have to worry about losing her.

One bite. 

One. Single. Bite.

He’d make sure that she liked it. During. And after. He’d keep her healthy and fucked and happy. Give her everything she wants. 

The non-Alpha part of him knows how ridiculous this is. Rey is not a fucking baby; she doesn’t _need_ him, she is with him because for some inexplicable reason she _wants_ to be, and that’s much better than any biological bond. And yet.

_If you bit her_ , a disgusting voice whispers in his head, _then she would actually_ need _you. She wouldn’t even dream of being apart from you, and you could have her around all the—_

“You okay?”

Ben looks up from his sandwich. She is sitting on the other side on the kitchen counter, staring at him and nibbling on her chips. Her own sandwich is long gone, and Ben tears what’s left of his in two and gives her the larger half. Her eyes widen in delight, and she accepts it. 

“Yes.”

She smiles, a little shyly. “Okay. Good. It felt like… like you’d gone somewhere. You sure everything is okay?”

Ben nods, a little too energetically. “It’s fine.”

…

It’s not fine. 

It is, quite frankly, hell, and that’s _before_ she goes off suppressants.

Then he almost bites her—God, at this point he almost bites her ten times a day. Initially just while they’re fucking (when she’s unsuppressed like that, the pleasure is eye-crossing, truly something from another dimension) but then, as time goes on, it’s even when she’s just _there_. Living her life. Just being in his space. 

He is a man obsessed. He finds himself grazing her gland with his fingertips at work, in front of their colleagues, or looking forward to her workouts, when her sports bra and ponytail give him the perfect visual of her upper back. In one memorable occasion, after a particularly grueling week, he snaps and turns her around, pins her wrists to the wall with one hand, and then makes her come for about five minutes just by rubbing the heel of his palm on her mating gland. Halfway through she starts begging him to actually fuck her ( _“Alpha, please, will you—will you please—inside—”_ ) but he simply _cannot_ , because if he did then he’d sink his teeth into her, and they’d be mated in under thirty seconds, and she’d be _his_ , his forever. He’d get to do all those things Alphas do for their mates that always used to sound like some horrible sort of prison but now are obscenely appealing, like making sure that she’s eating enough and getting the rest she needs, rubbing her feet and shoulders when she’s tired, and—if that’s what she requires of him—put children in her belly.

The moment Rey comes down from her orgasm Ben has to deposit her on the couch and step out of the room, because his hands are shaking and he cannot remember why he should stop himself from taking what he wants.

…

It’s really nice, when his hormones are not acting like he’s twelve all over again, to just _be_ with her. Discover her. Savor her. 

He knew it already, but she is funny and smart and quirky in a way that makes his barely-beating heart grow ten sizes. She teases him mercilessly about… about everything, damn her, and makes him laugh at the world instead of wanting to destroy it, and there is no place, no moment, no person that is not made better by her presence. 

Ben included.

…

Rey is on the porch, where Ben can see her from the window, petting the belly of a stretched out Rian and cooing to her. 

“Are you the cutest kitty in all of Middle Earth?” A faint meow. “Yes, of course you are.”

Rian bites Rey gently on the fleshy part on her hand; then she yawns, and continues staring at Rey adoringly—which, Ben privately thinks, is the only appropriate response. 

_…_

He has barely stepped out of the shower when she walks inside the bathroom, heavenly naked and smelling like Omega even more than usual.

She is _precisely_ his type—all muscles and wiriness and freckles painted over softly curved breasts and hips—but he doesn’t get to stare as much as he’d like, because she immediately drops on her knees. 

Right in front of him.

“What are you—?”

She doesn’t take him in her mouth. Yet. But the way she nuzzles against the delicate skin of the glands on his abdomen, her nose warm as she inhales deeply—it’s clear where this is going.

“How was your day?”

“Rey.” He grunts. A little bit. Or maybe it’s a whimper.

“You’re late. I missed you.” A little kiss. Just her lips against his upper thigh. 

He is fully hard now. Some precome on the tip, too. 

“Rey. What are you doing?”

She hums against the skin above his cock. “Nothing.” A smile. Then she licks a stripe up the shaft and _oh_ , this feels so fucking good. So. Fucking. Good. She is starting to smell like slick, too.

Ben has to grunt again; his hand is not as steady as he’d like when he wraps it in her hair to pull her up.

“Come on,” he manages to murmur, his voice hoarser than he thought it would be. “To bed. Let me go down on you. Fuck you a bit.”

Rey’s laugh is a little indignant. Mostly amused. “Excuse me. I got here first.” The warm air of her breath against his cock—unbearable. Oh, the agony. 

“Let’s go.” He tries again to drag her up, a little more forcefully. He fails, but her tits bounce a bit, and—god, he’s close to coming. Already. “It’s been two days.”

“Right.” Her teeth. Lightly scraping a gland hidden between his thigh and abdomen. “That’s why I’m—”

“Rey.”

“—kneeling in front of you and—”

“Rey.”

“—politely inviting you to ejaculate inside my mouth—”

“ _Rey_.”

His tone is too harsh. And his fingers are digging in her scalp now, his breath harsh in the small room, and he really, _really_ is an asshole. Rey deserves so much better, Rey needs kindness, Rey should just leave him, Rey is the perfect Omega, Rey—

Rey is staring up at him. With a curious expression and a soft, understanding smile, as though she can see right through him, and Ben was naked all along but now he feels… 

Stripped.

“You are allowed to have good things, you know?” Her voice is sweet and soft. “To want things. For yourself.“

I want _you_. I want _you_ so much.

Rey smiles as if she heard him. Did he speak out loud? No, no he didn’t. Right?

But she knows. After her unsuppressed heat, the one when the itch to bite her was so irresistible he ended up having to tear his teeth into his own forearms, Ben told her. He admitted to them—his basest impulses. Which means that she knows that he wants nothing but to mate her. That his days, now, are mostly waiting. Just waiting for a word from her.

“You _have_ me.” Rey pulls back and runs a hand on her nape, shifting her hair so that it’s over her shoulder. He can’t see her gland from here, but the gesture is as good a reminder of its existence as any. Not that he needs one. “You can want other things, too.”

He has to swallow. “Maybe I want to eat your cunt until it’s all swollen.”

She smiles before leaning forward and licking up his cock. 

This is—he should probably have himself under better control by now. But it’s so hard. She is so…

“I know you do.” She actually has him in her mouth. No, not precisely—just the tongue playing a little, swirling around the tip. And his hand trying to close around the base of his knot. Which is too big, of course, and—he can’t feasibly have a conversation right now. “But maybe you want this, too? Alpha?”

“Rey.” His head falls back. ”When you do this…” 

Amazing. Astounding.

“Licking you?” She is pumping him. Up. Down. Up. A swirl of her thumb. Down again.

He shakes his head. “When you call me— _fuck_. When you call me that.”  _Like I am your mate._

“Alpha? But you _are_ my Alpha. You take care of me and you make me come and you knot me to you for hours. How else am I supposed to—”

She doesn’t finish, because he ends up spurting all over her hand, her wrist, and her delicious little tits.

All in all, Ben considers, not that bad a night.

…

“What about this one?” 

He traces the white half moon on her wrist bone, marveling at how small and delicate her hand is compared to his own hulking paws. She has more scars than a young woman should. For Ben’s peace of mind, at least.

“Just a shop accident. In high school.” There are things she’s not telling him. So many things, but she has started to offer some small details, little by little. And Ben gobbles up every crumb. “Not a big deal. But my foster father didn’t believe in stitches, so…”

He looks at her, waiting to see if she’ll continues. She doesn’t, but burrows further inside his chest, and... g ood enough for now.

“You’re so comfortable,” she says.

“Am I?”  He is not. A comfortable person. He is a raving, wild mess. Chaotic. Aggressive. Unpleasant to be around.

“Yeah. You’re just so _big_. Can I live here?”

He laughs once, soft. “You do live here.” 

They moved in her stuff the other weekend. Ben smiles, remembering Rey asking him whether she could hang her framed picture of Rian next to his grandfather’s clock.

_“Sure, you can hang it wherever. Though since Rian lives in this house, maybe we don’t need a portrait of her—”_

He’d caught her narrowing gaze, lifted his hands defensively, and slowly backed out of the room.

“No.” Rey burrows closer to him. “I mean, can I live _here_?“

“You do live—”

“On top of you. Forever”

Ben averts his eyes.

He really wishes he could tell her. He wishes he could open his mouth and explain that before her he’d thought he knew what it meant to _want_ , but he hadn’t. That he cannot imagine a future without her. That sometimes he closes his eyes and lets himself think about her, really _think_ about her, and he feels it physically inside his body, like a thing alive, the intensity of his love. He wishes he could put a million jumbled, covetous thoughts into words for her, but he is not able to and maybe never will be, so he just tightens his arms and pulls her into himself. 

“Of course.”

…

She lets him mate her. 

She lets him marry her.

She even lets him give her his name.

Ben doesn’t… 

He never thought…

It’s impossible to say how much he…

Ben _knew_ love existed. He _knew,_ because artists and musicians and writers and scientists do nothing but harp on and on and _on_ about it, with their fucking long-ass poems in iambic pentameters and marble sculptures in the Louvre and popcorn rom-coms and Nature Neuroscience papers about the mating habits of the prairie vole, but… 

Ben had no idea.

…

There are not one, not two, but _three_ moments in the operation when things have gone wrong. It’s hard to say whether he could have done anything differently, and even harder to decide whether if he had, the outcome would have been significantly better. Virtually impossible to determine, but it doesn’t stop Ben from sitting in the dark with his eyes on the floor and his elbows on his knees, wondering if he is the worst thing that ever happened to his patients, to the medical community, to the fucking world at large.

He’s not sure how long he has been contemplating his failures when Rey slips between him and the back of the couch, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his torso. 

“Bad surgery?”

He nods. She smells like sleep and toothpaste. 

“I’m sorry.”

Ben is sorry, too. He bets the patient would also be sorry, if he weren’t food for worms.

“I…” He rubs his eyes with his fingers. “I fucked up.” 

Rey sighs. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t say anything, but her scent is a more potent sedative than any barbiturates. When she licks his neck glands—first small, kittenish wipes of her tongue, then broad lingering strokes, it sends him into a slightly stupefied, dazed state.

He doesn’t deserve to feel better. He categorically doesn’t. But by the end of it, he can almost bear to be himself again.

“You hair is getting a bit long,” she murmurs against his nape.

Something tugs inside his chest. “Is it?”

“Mm-hmm.” A yawn. “It’s late. We should sleep.”

A few minutes later, she takes his hand and guides him up from the couch. Without letting go, Ben follows her up the stairs, down the dark hallway and into their bedroom.

…

He is just staring at her hips and ass and graceful, arching spine, marveling about how perfect she is as he fucks into her from behind, when she moans into the pillow and says: 

“Ben?”

He can barely think. But he grunts something that sounds a little like “Yes” and uses his forearm to wipe the sweat off his forehead. The scar of his bite is pearly white against tanned, freckled skin. 

“I just need you to know that I—” She pushes back against him, and he is so deep—he is about to knot her. He is about to—it’s gonna swell so much. Like a little fist inside her tight Omega cunt. God. _God._ “Oh. Ben— _Oh._ ”

It gets lost, whatever it is that she wanted to tell him. Though Ben thinks that maybe he already knows.

…

She is sitting on the couch when Ben comes home, playing with Rian and Audrey in a half-hearted, distracted way that is not quite like her. 

“Luke had stroke,” she says the moment he steps into the room. “He’s in intensive care. He probably won’t make it through the night.” He can’t see her face, not when she is turned away from him like that, but it’s clear that she’s trying not to cry. “I’m going to… I’m going to fly to him. Tonight.”

Ben… 

It’s been nearly two decades, and he truly has no idea how he might feel about Luke, or about Luke dying. But his mate is very close to tears, and he knows very well how he feels about that.

“Would you like me to come with you?”

Rey nods immediately, and he books their tickets while she puts together their bags.

…

“He loved it, by the way,” his mother tells him at the reception following the funeral.

“Mmm?”

“That you and Rey are married. Mated.”

Ben blinks. It seems unlikely, if not outright impossible. “Luke did?”

“Yes.”

“Luke Skywalker?”

“You know other Lukes?”

“… really?”

“Yes. He was really proud. In his weird, antagonistic way, of course. Proud of both you and Rey.” She chuckles fondly. “He talked about the two of you a lot.”

Very hard to believe. Too hard, maybe. Ben fiddles with his cufflinks and scans the room. The moment his eyes fall on Rey, busy talking animatedly with Chewie, something uneasy unknots inside his chest. 

“I haven’t officially met her yet,” his mother says. “Will you introduce me?”

He sighs. And he nods.

…

Twenty minutes later Leia giggles, delighted, while Rey shows her the video of Rian and Audrey meeting for the first time. 

(Lots of hissing and swatting, followed by Rian’s abrupt decision that Audrey needed a bath and a little nap in her lap.)

Ben sighs again.

…

It’s scary, the way Rey and Leia hit it off.

Ever after not being on speaking terms with his mother for years, Ben can still only manage to text her every couple of months or so, which suits him just fine. Rey, though—he doesn’t know how often Rey and Leia talk, but one night Rey bakes him braided challah that Ben could swear is a recipe he remembers from his childhood, and somehow she seems to know about those food allergies that he doesn’t like to dwell on ( _“Should you be having hazelnuts, baby?”_ ), and the sudden way she takes up crocheting (probably his mother’s only non-work pastime) seems a little suspicious.

Leia comes to stay with them for the holidays. Ben rolls his eyes a lot, but Rey is happy, so happy that he cannot stop staring at her. And when Leia mentions being close to retirement and possibly relocating away from DC, when she refers to Audrey and Rian as her grandcats, when she shares embarrassing stories of Ben as a child, Rey looks even happier. So Ben doesn’t protest when his mother says things like “The cold season is not so bad, in this state,” or when Rey is constantly looking up Zillow for houses that might be “in your price range, Leia.” (Ben might have been less than forthright about the financial situation of the Skywalkers, because Rey has been known to say less than flattering things about wealthy people; whenever Rey starts talking about mortgage rates Leia lifts one eyebrow and catches Ben’s gaze. He immediately looks elsewhere.)

Leia and Rey fill some kind of need in each other’s lives, and Ben… he should probably be irritated, but as time goes by, he finds that he doesn’t mind too much.

…

He is sitting on his side of the bed, fingers pressing the buttons of the clock on his nightstand. 

“What time do you need the alarm for?” 

“Six.” Rey yawns. Ben sets the alarm, makes to get into bed, and then sighs when she adds: “Actually make it six fifteen.”

She is half asleep when he finally gets under the covers, smelling sweet and not too far from her heat. Ben wouldn’t mind fucking her, something slow and sleepy with her spread open underneath him, but he’d rather have her well-rested. Less than a week, anyway, and he’ll get to take care of her. He’ll forget how it feels not to be knot deep inside her.

She turns towards Ben, shimmying her way to his side of the bed. “What time are you going in? Are we driving to the hospital together?” 

“Yeah.”

A dip of the mattress, and in a few seconds Audrey is curling at Rey’s feet, a black ball of shiny fur. Less than a minute later Leia Corgana joins them, settling against Rey's back in a considerably less graceful motion. Rian is crouched on the windowsill like a sphinx, staring intently at Ben.

“ _What?_ ” he mouths defensively. Rian just blinks slowly a few times, and then begins to lick one of her paws.

“Hey, can we stop at Starbucks in the morning?”

"We have coffee in the kitchen."

"But can we?"

“… sure.” 

“Awesome.” Another yawn, and then Rey’s breathing evens with sleep.

Ben exhales, lets his head sink back into his pillow, and pulls his Omega tighter into his arms. He takes a deep breath, feels his heartbeat slow down and his muscles relax, and then closes his eyes, only to immediately open them again. 

_This is my life,_ he thinks, staring dazedly into the darkness. He feels Rey burrow deeper against his chest. _This, here. It's mine, and I have it_. 

He listens to the silence inside his head until he is sound asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [on Twitter! 💕](https://twitter.com/EverSoAli)


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